The basic design of the Orange Basketweave Cable Shawl was inspired by the shawl found in Weekend Knitting by Melanie Falick. The design is simple: Knit a rectangle and creatively join two points of the rectangle to make a shawl.
The shawl is made with Cascade Eco+, color Pumpkin, on old metal needles, US size 3. Please note, however, that I like to knit with small needles, so if you were to duplicate the pattern, try much larger needles, such as US 8 or 9. I casted on 102 stitches and worked the garment until it was about 4-4.5′, then blocked and seamed it into a shawl. The great thing about this piece is that, because it is a rectangle, it was easy to make sizing modifications. The dense knitted stitches also made for an extremely warm (and quite heavy) piece.
The basketweave cable design can be found in Barbara Abbey’s Complete Book of Knitting, and goes as follows:
Basketweave Cable pattern
Multiple of 6 sts.
All odd-numbered rows: Purl all sts
Rows 2 and 4: Knit all sts
Row 6: *CF3*, repeat at *
Row 8 and 10: Knit all sts
Row 12: K3, *CB3*, repeat at *, end K3
Note:
CF3: slip 3 sts onto a cable needle and place in front of work, knit next 3 sts, then knit the 3 sts from cable needle
CB3: slip 3 sts onto a cable needle and place in back of work, knit next 3 sts, then knit the 3 sts from cable needle.
Repeat these 12 rows.
The sweater is a basic drop-shouldered pullover, the shape inspired by Elizabeth Zimmermann and others, while the charts for the color work design were taken mostly from the wonderful Anatolian Knitting Designs: Sivas Stocking Patterns Collected in an Istanbul Shantytown and some improvisations on a traditional fair isle knitting pattern.
The yarn is un-dyed sport weight alpaca, quite similar to the Baby Twist by Alpaca With a Twist, and I used US size 2.5 needles for the project, though if I were doing it again, I’d probably use size 3.
